


Resolute Dreamwalker

by timeandtimor



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, attempted character study, i hope to use some of the lore to do some world-building about the entity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27910624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeandtimor/pseuds/timeandtimor
Summary: The fake snow in Ormond bothered him like a bad dream.
Kudos: 12





	Resolute Dreamwalker

Temperature didn’t exist. 

The fake snow in Ormond bothered him like a bad dream. He could touch it, and he could squish it in his hands like real snow, but it would never turn his fingers red, then blue. He put it in his mouth, once, except it didn’t even fade like real snow. It didn’t dissolve. It sat on his tongue like heavy, flavorless mush. He spat it back out and it was grey. The Entity didn’t understand.

Well, neither did Quentin.

There was something to be said about how the Entity made so many almost-right replications of reality: the crackling of a campfire, the lucidity of falling asleep - even that forcefully brought by the hands of a sleep demon - and the nausea of blood loss. If he didn’t look too closely, he could almost believe everything was real. Except, any ounce of observation revealed that that couldn’t be true.

Like, the fire seemed to pause at times. The flames just wouldn’t flicker, and, regardless of the intensity of his stare, it would return unexpectedly. But then, he may not see the fire petrified for many trials. 

Also, the sensation of falling asleep was _almost_ the same, except it was too sudden. Freddy had been a master manipulator and could convince his victims that they were still awake so they’d let their guard down. Here, consciousness was ripped away in an instant, dipping the world into something far more dramatic with feather-esque ashes as company. 

Meanwhile, blood loss was the same no matter what weapon caused it. A jagged knife or a hatchet cut the same way, despite the fact that sharpness and location of the strike should have had an impact on the manner in which blood was lost. He hadn’t taken AP Bio just to be convinced a neck's arterial spray and a more blunt strike to a shoulder would bleed the same. The Entity simply had limitations in its understanding of reality, or at least in its recreation therein.

He thought about it, on his darker days. On losing streaks. When he’d been sacrificed so many times that it seemed he only ever knew the Entity’s touch, he would think about how things had been simpler in Springwood. Freddy terrorized him, of course, but at least his death there would have been permanent. At least Freddy could only have played with him for so long in the dream world before his brain mercifully stopped.

It made him nauseous to ever want to Freddy’s touch, and he _didn’t_ want it, but at least the strike of his claws back in Springwood - real Springwood - would have made him bleed real blood, and it would have stung hot on his skin. 

He thought back to the steam from the boiler room that had threatened to burn him, that had made his hair curl ungratefully and breathing more difficult. At the very least, he would have been able to be singed. It was fucking sick. Maybe Badham could have burned down twice. Maybe he and Freddy could have matching burn scars.

The thought made his lip curl, catching the attention of Claudette.

“Are you okay, Quentin?”

He looked at her and felt a tiredness resonating so deeply in his bones that he couldn’t remember a time where it wasn’t a part of him. “Always,” he said with an unconvincing smile. His face felt dry, like it was going to crack from withstanding the weight of the bags under his eyes. 

Claudette looked reassured, anyways, but he was never certain it wasn’t just to make him feel successful in comforting her. She was fairly perceptive, but also kind enough to let him believe in a harmless misconception. “I can take next watch,” she offered, and Quentin huffed a breath almost like laughter.

“Just get some rest. I’ll wake you,” he said, and it looked like she almost believed him. He was guilty of staying up much longer than the others. He sighed with relief when she rolled over, away from the campfire’s light. He knew the ‘sleep’ everyone got was a facsimile of the real thing, much like everything in the Entity’s world, but it offered normalcy.

Standing vigil _was_ his normal.

He stared at the fire as Claudette’s breathing slowed down to a more restful rate. 

He should have been letting his mind rest after his last trial with the Oni, where he bled more than he didn't. His altruism made him an easy pincushion for the demon's blade, but he hadn't been as careless as he was with Freddy. Those trials, his altruism bordered on martyrdom, but it was self-serving to a small degree. While he did feel the most competent to fight Freddy asleep, he also felt more real in the dream world than he did anywhere else these days.

He found no comfort in the fire that he knew was fake. It didn’t suddenly still under his gaze, but he kept daring it to. He reached a hand out towards it, watched as the fire danced around his hand but didn’t warm it. He felt empty. He hated everything about being trapped for eternity, but he hated the lack of temperature a little more than the cycle of pain. At least the pain made him think, even for a second, that he was alive. The lack of burning, the lack of freezing, it all made him feel like a phantom, like he was haunting his own body.

If there was one thing he could count on, it was trials with Freddy, where his dream world was mostly unaffected by the Entity. Freddy couldn’t change locations on a whim, or even his own appearance, but the dream demon still had control over much of the dreamer’s perception if they were caught. 

Quentin could sweat in the dream world, could feel the heat of the boiler room fade against Freddy’s hot breath on the back of his neck. If there was one thing Freddy loved about playing in his dream world, it was bringing the heat, something vindictive for the man who burned alive.

Perhaps, then, the lack of temperature should have been comforting.

Yeah, he thought bitterly as the campfire hesitated under his touch again. At least this wasn’t a bad fucking dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is my first post for the DBD fandom so I hope I'm not too late. 
> 
> I want to write meme-y funny things but I also want to write speculative, sometimes dark things. All the DBD people I follow on Twitter are funny as hell and I want to incorporate that mood in my works, but I also desperately crave character studies and world-building/lore clarifying so it seems I'm gonna focus on the latter first.
> 
> What Quentin ships are the cool kids into?
> 
> (If you saw this without a summary, no you didn't.)


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